Three times recipient of UJ’s "Distinguished Researcher Award" and Prof. of Pharmacognosy and Phytochemistry, Dr. Fatma U. Afifi was born in Istanbul, Turkey, and obtained her Bs Pharm (Mag. Pharm) from the University of Vienna, Austria, and her postgraduate degree in Pharmacognosy and Phytochemistry as Doctor of Natural Sciences (Dr. Sc. Nat.) from ETH-Zurich, Switzerland.

As the first faculty member to be appointed at UJ’s newly established Faculty of Pharmacy in 1981, she is considered one of the founders of the Faculty. During the past 33 years, she held several administrative positions including Head of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences (1986-88, 1989-91), Vice-Dean (1991) and Dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy (1991-2002).

Prof. Afifi is a highly published scholar with about 120 publications in peer reviewed international journals and wrote three chapters of books in Pharmaceutical Sciences. She has supervised and co-supervised more than 20 MSc and PhD students, and was invited as guest lecturer in many international conferences in Jordan, Palestine, Turkey, Germany, Italy, Egypt, Pakistan, India, and China. She presented her research findings in more than 50 conferences. She is three times recipient of UJ’s "Distinguished Researcher Award," in 2011, 2012 and 2013.

She is a member of several national and international scientific and professional organizations including the Middle Eastern Cancer Consortium (MECC), the International Association of the Medicinal Plants (GA), and the Jordanian Pharmaceutical Syndicate. She is also an Honorary Member of the Association of Colleges of Pharmacy in the Arab World.

She also servers on the Editorial Board of several peer reviewed journals, such as BMC-Complementary and Alternative Medicine; Pharmacy Times / Middle East; International Journal of Pharmaceutical, Chemical and Biological Science; International Journal of Life Science and Medical Reviews; and The Open Complementary Medicine.

Her research interests include isolation, identification and structure determination of constituents of medicinal and aromatic plants using different techniques and evaluating their biological activities as well as ethnopharmacology.

Throughout her academic career Dr Afifi was engaged in research projects funded by UJ, the Higher Council for Science and Technology (HCST), the National Center for Research and Development/ Biotechnology Program (NCBI), the European Union, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

She was, for repeated terms, member of different higher committees of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, including the Technical Accreditation Committee, and of the Ministry of Health Committee for Medicinal Plants and Natural Products. She was also a Member of the Arbitration Committee of "The El-Hassan Bin Talal Award for Academic Excellence' in 2000.